Elige Educar: Inspiring More Men to See Themselves as Teachers

Elige Educar is a Chilean initiative with a mission to ensure that every student in Chile has access to excellent teachers and early childhood educators. For more than 15 years, the organisation has worked to strengthen the teaching profession through a combination of field-based programmes, applied research, communication campaigns, and evidence-informed public policy.

As part of this work, Elige Educar is addressing a significant gender gap: men remain severely underrepresented in early childhood and primary teaching.

“In Chile, there are only nine male early childhood educators nationwide,” Elige Educar tells Equimundo. “And just 21.5 percent of primary school teachers are men. “

Elige Educar believes that having more men in teaching gives children access to more diverse role models, challenges gender stereotypes from an early age, and helps children see teaching as a profession for everyone.

“Our work is not only about how we create pathways to attract more men into teaching,” says a Elige Educar team member. “It is also about how we approach teacher retention, well-being, and support through a gendered lens across our programmes.”

Since 2024, the Caring Masculinity Fund (CMF) has supported Elige Educar’s Por Más project to understand and challenge the factors behind the low representation of men in teaching in Chile.

The funding has enabled Elige Educar to build the evidence, partnerships and public awareness needed to lay the groundwork for future policy and programmes. CMF-backed research explored why so few men choose careers in early childhood and primary education, the barriers they face, and lessons from promising approaches in other countries.

Building on this evidence, Elige Educar also launched Los hombres educadores también, a public campaign bringing visibility to an often-overlooked challenge.

“The fund has also given us the opportunity to look beyond Chile and learn from international experience,” says an Elige Educar team member. “We have been able to research promising initiatives from different countries and identify lessons that could inform policy and practice in Chile.”

With the support of the fund, Elige Educar were able to interview the nine male early childhood educators in Chile, bringing their experiences and challenges into focus.

“Being able to hear these testimonies through rigorous research moved us deeply as a team,” says Elige Educar. “It was their voices — together with the rest of the research we carried out — that led us to build a solid communications campaign and advocacy strategies, and to never lose sight of what these educators live through day after day.”